Engine won(39)t turn over-gctid382890

[Guest]

Well... after one short sucessful shakedown cruise, on mother's day I decided to take the boat out for the second ride of the season. Low and behold, I got just a clicking sound when I turned the key. Both batteries. Knowing that the deep cycle was at least 4 Years old and thinking that perhaps the other (starter battery) went bad, I decided to replace the starter battery to see if she would turn over. It did and started right up. One day later....stone cold dead! Keep in mind that the boat is plugged into shore power and the charger is always left on. So, do I have a non functioning charger, or some sort of short? I pray the later is not the case.

Any thoughts?

[Foster]

I'd guess a short. New battery starts and runs the boat. Overnight it's drained. That means there is some load discharging the battery.

The charger also could be bad. But if the load is bigger than what the charger can keep up with it will draw the battery down.

I'd get an ampmeter and connect it between the battery and the boat. All breakers and ignition switch off should be no current. If not you'll need to start pulling things apart.

[dmcb]

If you have a short that exceeds your battery charger capacity and drains the battery also, I think you will smell that. It should blow a fuse.

I suspect the battery charger is draining the battery instead of charging it.

But that is just a poor guess.

Doug

[Guest]

dmcb wrote:
If you have a short that exceeds your battery charger capacity and drains the battery also, I think you will smell that. It should blow a fuse.

I suspect the battery charger is draining the battery instead of charging it.

But that is just a poor guess.

Doug

I was thinking the same thing Doug. Also I noticed a red light glowing on the charger that I've never noticed before. Not saying its definitely not been there, but I sure never saw it. Maybe I'll see if I can find the books, but I'm thinking green would be good, but red??

[Foster]

The red light on my charger means "Charging", green means "Fully Charged".

[2850Bounty]

dmcb wrote:
If you have a short that exceeds your battery charger capacity and drains the battery also, I think you will smell that. It should blow a fuse.

I suspect the battery charger is draining the battery instead of charging it.

A very good possibility.

If there is a load, like Doug says, you should be able to see it with a VOM temporarily connected between each bank and the hull's system.

[Guest]

Knowing that the deep cycle was at least 4 Years old and thinking that perhaps the other (starter battery) went bad, I decided to replace the starter battery to see if she would turn over.

did you ever check the battery to be bad or th new one to be dead? you could also have a starter relay, starter solinoid, or starter acting up.

Beau

[Guest]

Hello just read this thread as I am having the same problems, I'm leaning towards the starter, relay or solenoid going bad how can I trouble shoot this? Also what did you end up finding to be the problem?

Thx

[Guest]

Seaquel wrote:
I was thinking the same thing Doug. Also I noticed a red light glowing on the charger that I've never noticed before. Not saying its definitely not been there, but I sure never saw it. Maybe I'll see if I can find the books, but I'm thinking green would be good, but red??

While on shore power do you have any 12v devices turned on? Lights, radio, heaters or anything tied into the 12v supply? I have my boat on shore power and our batter charger went out this winter. We discovered that the batteries were dead even though the charger was turned on. We have a bilge heater tied into 12v which surely ran down the battery. New charger fixed things right up.

[Guest]

I'm no mechanic, and I don't know if this would be a helpful comment, but I battled starting issues for 2 or 3 seasons. Replaced just about everything electrical (battery, starter, solenoid, etc.) and cleaned every connector I could find. In the end it was the slave solenoid - replaced it and it haven't had a problem since.